


Cardiac Arrest

by Just_Mad_Enough



Series: Negligible Senescence [6]
Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Hope, not quite so bleak anymore, still pretty bleak though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-22
Updated: 2018-02-22
Packaged: 2019-03-22 13:04:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13764777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Just_Mad_Enough/pseuds/Just_Mad_Enough
Summary: Cardiac arrest is a sudden loss of blood flow resulting from the failure of the heart to effectively pump.





	Cardiac Arrest

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to update EXTRA fast, because I probably won't update at ALL for a week or so. Work is going to be busy, and I won't have the time.  
> But I'll sit down next Tuesday or Wednesday, and if the Muse (her name is LB) is willing, there's going to be another chapter then!  
> Huge THANK YOU to ScooterThyme for beta-reading!!

 

The currents tear at him without mercy. His thoughts – the few that are still left – come sluggish, and every time he wakes they’re farther apart. And he suspects that his waking moments don’t come as often anymore, either. He could let go, let the sleep take him and just stop fighting the current altogether.

But even though he doesn’t even know his own name anymore, he knows he doesn’t want to be gone. He might not know anything else, but this seems to be anchored deep down in the last corner of his being. He holds on. He has to.

 

*** *** ***

 

He is gone. Not dead, not back in Hell. Simply gone. She came home yesterday, only to find Maze sitting in the middle of the floor of her room, everything she owns in heaps around her. She’d been searching for something, apparently.

Maze had just looked at her, eyes wet and bloodshot, before she broke down in tears again.

She told her the news between hiccoughs and expletives.

How Amenadiel had been allowed back home and Lucifer had been erased from existence.

She sat down on Maze’s bed, looking on while the demon went back to searching for something.

When she said she could help if she knew what for, exactly, Maze only mumbled something about a coin and went back to looking.

She got up and left her to it then – she doesn’t think that Maze will be around for much longer. She knows that the ex-barkeeper liked her well enough, that she’s fond of Trixie and that Linda is… something to her.

For all that, she doesn’t think she’ll be able to stay with them. There’s something empty in her eyes, and she doesn’t think human kindness and friends can fill that.

So she leaves Maze to her own devices and shuts herself in her own bedroom. She undresses and goes to have a shower and lets the water hide her tears.

 

*** *** ***

 

Later, she tells her daughter that Lucifer had died. When Trixie is done kicking things through her room and then crying in her arms, she asks her why.

What happened, why did he leave them? Her heart nearly stops in her chest, it hurts so much, but she tells her a variation of the truth. She tells her little monkey that Lucifer went to some bad men to get help for her. That the doctors had run out of options and he went and did something stupid – that he saved her, but didn’t survive it himself.

She sits with her daughter for the rest of the night, cards her fingers through the thick, dark hair whenever she starts to sniffle in her sleep, and she stares into the dark nothingness behind her eyes and feels empty.

She wants to push some button and rewind. Maybe play the thing with the professor smarter or… or maybe go back to before she met Lucifer.

Take a personal day, have someone else handle the Delilah Case.

She knows by now that this isn’t the first time that her partner had died for her. The Devil, dying twice for a little human being. It’s like some big, cosmic joke. Or maybe a bad novel.

She falls asleep at some point, but her dreams are just as empty as her waking hours.

There’s something pulling at her, stealing things she can’t name. But then there’s a hand in hers and she feels like weeping. She wakes up gasping and not an iota more rested than before. She also has the feeling she’s forgetting something.

 

*** *** ***

 

The first three days after the _funeral_ come and go. The trashcan gets emptied, taking the last dregs of his religious upbringing away with the rest of the rubbish. 

He thought some feelings of regret might rear their collective heads, or maybe fear that this kind of blasphemy will carry him straight to Hell after his death but, no, nothing.

He’s not sure he wants to be part of heaven. Not if the Big Boss is someone who just lets his kid die when he could do something to stop it. He he’s _God_ , for fucks sake. He probably actually _could_ have done something.

Also, even if he goes to Hell, he knows a guy.

Five days have gone by, and he’s still not reached the point where he can look at one of those street preachers and _not_ want to punch him in the face.

His daughter is a red-nosed, bleary eyed mess, and Chloe doesn’t show any feeling at all.

For the first time since he’s met her, Maze doesn’t scare him. She says the right things, makes the right faces and gestures, but there’s none of the unholy glee behind it anymore.

He broke into Amenadiel’s apartment when he doesn’t get an answer after knocking for ten minutes even though he knows the other man is in. He walks in on him standing in front of a mirror, wings spanned wide, upper body distorted, trying to reach his back with one of the weirdly curved knives he’s seen on the demon. He should be awed or scared or _something_ by the sight of the truly divine, but it doesn’t move him at all.

They stare at each other through their reflections, and then he silently leaves the place again.

He’s _not_ equipped to stop an angel from self-mutilating.

When he goes to see Dr.Martin, she answers the door to her home with a birds nest instead of hair, dressed in a stained and wrinkled suit. She reeks of alcohol and unwashed human.

He declines her invitation to come in and have a drink and quickly leaves again. When he reaches for his phone to call someone to come and talk to the therapist, he comes up empty. From all the people he knows are friends with the woman, there’s not a single one in a better mindset right now. He has to hope that she’ll pull herself together somehow.

His last-ditch effort at some normalcy is Ella, but he should’ve known better.

The perky, little forensic seems to have lost her perk out in the woods. There’s no music on and no earbuds in sight anywhere.

She’s dressed in just black and a notably absent smile. But she’s not creeping him out or scaring him, so he’s asking her how she’s doing.

Then she tells him she’s sad, but she going to be okay because: _God works in mysterious ways, and He has a plan._

She has her fingers on the cross around her neck and he has to leave.

 *** *** ***

He goes by Chloe’s place later that day. It’s Tuesday, and he thinks it might cheer both his girls up to stick to their tradition.

Chloe blinks at him and asks him what he wants.

“Well, it’s Tuesday so I thought, you know…”

And he grins at her, albeit weakly, and waits for her to realize what he means.

She doesn’t, but she lets him in anyway and helps him assemble dinner.

 

She asks him to stay for a moment longer after Trixie has been tucked in. It doesn’t take him long to wish he had declined. Turns out that Lucifer won’t be waiting for anyone, anywhere.

The next day he calls in sick. He doesn’t want to hurt Ella, and he’s pretty sure she would be hurt, one way or the other, if he went to her only to rip the necklace off her neck to throw it into the nearest body of water he can find.

 

*** *** ***

He wakes up again, more’s the pity. But he feels somehow not quite as lost as the last time. There’s an echo of something, nearly as though someone is holding his hand.

And voices, far away. Laughter, and the squeal of a child’s voice. It rings in his ears like sirens, after all this time in the silence.

And it’s stupid and ridiculous and has no meaning to him, but it’s comforting anyway.

There’s a splash of color, two pairs of eyes – one dark brown and one a lovely shade of blue and… _blue eyes and blond hair!_ And suddenly he has a name again, he knows he does. He can’t quite grasp it, but he knows it’s there somewhere.

And all the while the voice is chanting in his ear, two words, the most stupid and beautiful he’s ever heard.

 _Taco Tuesday_.

 

*** END ***

**Author's Note:**

> Yay? I mean, I guess I DID manage to end it on a more hopeful tone than the last few parts?  
> That's gotta count for something, right?  
> So long!


End file.
